


I Am a Poor Wayfaring Stranger

by Chatter



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Muggle, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Animal Transformation, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:14:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23258242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chatter/pseuds/Chatter
Summary: I’m going home to see my mother. I’m going there to see my father. Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light. I’m going there. My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim, I had to stop for the night. I’m going there. Such a lovely place.What a lovely place.Do you think you can help me? I don’t know where else I can go. Over and over and over and over. Over and over, I knowit’s over. It never really began but, in my heart, it was so real.And you even spoke to me, and said:"If you're so funnyThen why are you on your own tonight?And if you're so clever—If you're so very entertaining—If you're so very good-looking—Oh Mother, soil is falling over my head.I know my way is hard and steep, but beauteous fields arise before me. I’m only going over Jordan. Such a lovely place. I’m only going home. What a lovely place.I’m only going home. I’m going there to see my mother.She said she’d meet me when I come.
Relationships: Fleur Delacour/Hermione Granger
Comments: 9
Kudos: 52





	I Am a Poor Wayfaring Stranger

The only magic Hermione had known was fleeting. She’d drowned in it like heat. Like shame.

Magic, unlike Fleur, did not turn her into a bird.

Feathers burst from skin the way bone does after falling from a cliff. Fleur sneered on reflex. Lips to blood to beak. Webbing grew between fingers, then writhed. Crying to retching. Nails to talons.  
  


Her voice creaked.

_“_ _Désolé_ _.”_

Her voice creaked.

_“_ _Je suis vraiment désolé._ _”_

Her voice creaked.

“Dontlo _okdonlookdonlawk—"_

Fleur squawked.

Hermione’s foot twitched forward. Then, back. Back, back, back backback _backand_ Fleur squawked behind her. The sound of curtains unfurling, the sound of wings flapping, a body dragging, screeching screeching retching.

Laughter peeled past the trees. Gabrielle burst in the sunlight, wrestling with Fleur’s cousins on the grass. One, much taller but equally beautiful, summoned a broom and zipped over a tackle. She stuck her tongue out and loop-de-looped.

Hermione could hear a distant crowing.

Mugs of coffee levitated over glasses of wine, weaving their way to Apolline and her husband. His name was the sound of laughter and all she saw was the word _papa_ , sung in Fleur’s voice. A drying portrait on the grass waved up at him.

Magic, like Hermione, meant kissing at sleepovers. Holding hands in the dark. Pretending to like NSYNC and counting the days till college.

_"Apolline,”_ she shrieked.

Cups fell to the grass and rolled.

“Fleur, she’s—” retching, squawking, screeching.

“She’s—” A bird. Half a bird. Something in between.

“She’s _hurt_.” Hermione’s face dissolved into tears. “Fleur’s hurt, please— _please help her._ ”

Gabrielle rushed forward, and a cousin, the tall one, scooped her up and hid her face against her neck with such force her hands turned white. Gabrielle babbled in French too quickly for Hermione to make out. Her voice was like a baby.

-

In the face of rejection, people become animals.

-

A caw came on all fours. There were wings where Fleur’s arms used to be. Feathers hard as scales picked up dirt and leaves and cut into the grass as they flapped. Her left leg contorted. It looked as though it had begun to transform and stopped partway through. Her body lifted only to be caught by her mother after nearly falling every several steps.

Patches of skin bled between feather and talon.

Fleur spoke half-beak, half-mouth.

“Don’t look at me.Don’tbescared. I̵̭̖̝̭̦̬͘c̴̨̰̪͖̗͎̍̐͐́̊̾̚͝͠ͅa̷̼͔͖̞̤̓̽̆̔̓̓̌ͅń̴̳͈̥̱̗̠̀͆̕͠Ė̴̹́̊̀͑x̴̢͙̱̳̞̜̠̙̉͆̽̾͘̚͝p̵̡̙̠̝̫̲̓̎̂̌̆̈́͝l̵̛̟̇̐͊͑͂̿ͅą̴̢̞͉͔̏̈̎̈́͌̋̅̔i̷̘͎͉̞̮͗͌n̸͔̹͓͔͋̈̀̈͋̌IcanExplain.”

Hermione touched a patch of reddened skin under her eyes.

“Fleur?” she asked. Her voice was a whisper. “That’s you?”

Fleur cawed.

Apolline set her daughter down gently and moved to usher the children indoors.

“Are you okay?”

Fleur nodded, and Hermione began to cry.

-

There was magic like riding broomsticks and conjuring fire, and there was magic like being in love with another girl. It did not matter much to Hermione which Fleur was.

-

Fleur was like a werewolf bird, is how she understood it. And wizards were real. Nothing like _Lord of the Rings_ , as she was both relieved and disappointed to discover.

“And we’re soulmates?”

Fleur looked at her unwaveringly. “Yes.”

“Okay.”

_“Okay?”_ Fleur repeated. “You’re—it’s okay?”

“Yes,” Hermione said. “I love you, and that doesn’t change anything.”

“But,” she continued, “why did you transform when we kissed?”

“Everyone has tried to hide themselves, Hermione,” Fleur said. “Doesn’t it become harder to hide something once you’ve been ashamed of it?”

“I am who I am because of my mother and my father. That is something I can never change. That is something I _would_ never change no matter how much I complain of it.”

“But?”

“But,” she said, “it will always be hard not to hate myself when I am different. You know this well, don’t you?”

Hermione pressed a kiss to the corner of her lips.

“Yes,” she said, “but you see me. And now I see you too.”

“Yes.”

Fleur leaned in and kissed the corner of Hermione’s lips in kind.

“You do.”

Seeing something and loving it. Isn’t that the same?

**Author's Note:**

> I thought I was going to post fleurmione fanfiction during the summer but then I fell in love and out of love and somewhere along an unsustainable love I forgot to be honest with myself. And in forgetting to be honest with myself I was unable to write honestly.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading this despite our global COVID-19 outbreak. Stay healthy everyone!
> 
> Summary and Title Derived From: the film 1917's "I Am a Poor Wayfaring Stranger", "Hotel California" by the Eagles, and "I Know It's Over" by The Smiths


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